Be prepared, this is an arduous trip.  It is also the most rewarding one you could ever take!  A guide helps–especially when the going gets tough and your survival is at risk.

Reminds me of something Indiana Jones said:

Julian Glover as Walter Donovan: “We’re only one step away.”
Indiana Jones: “That’s usually when the ground falls out from beneath your feet.”

Don’t worry, this isn’t “The Temple of Doom” and we don’t have to do this alone! Many feel unsteady and unsure right now. Relationships, safety, careers, money, and health issues plague our world and it does feel like a crisis. Utilize these understandings and tools to help you stay on firm ground when it feels you’re about to lose your footing.

When we face a crisis, what’s truly important in our lives becomes crystal clear.

Titles, bank accounts, possessions…they all lose meaning.  In an instant we are given the opportunity to shed our past and our ideas about who we. When you or someone close is diagnosed with a terminal illness, has a heart attack, stroke or car accident, your life stands still. There’s no going back to “normal”.  What matters in this life hits us square in the face! The only thing which is important in those moments is survival.

Most of us have had a situation where we were forced to respond in the moment from a  higher perspective. You know the place, the one that kicks in when life becomes overwhelming and we lose control. A different part of us takes over and it is that part which gives us the ability to face a crisis and do what has to be done.  When the dust settles–we did what we did not think we could do, we got through the crisis. These are the same skills we can use to get through what plagues us in our lives and in the world at large today.

We live in perpetual crisis today.  Cortisol, also known as the stress hormone, pumps non-stop as we engage the  fight or flight response multiple times each and every day. A physical mechanism designed to save us from serious danger and ensure our survival now pumps in response to a life which has become dangerously complex. We live a life untrue to who we are at our core and we die a little every day. Just like ‘death from a thousand cuts’, we don’t see we are bleeding to death.

The good news, human beings are incredibly resilient.  Just think back to stories of survival during the Holocaust for confirmation. Emanuel Ringelblum, a Jewish historian, collected stories of Polish Jews before and during his time in the Warsaw Ghetto.  He realized that those who shed their ideas about who they were and adopted a realistic acceptance of their situation in the present, had a much better chance of survival. We have it in us to respond to an emergency and we also have it in us to face what threatens to rob us of our life energy…one cut at a time.  We can do what has to be done.  We are that resilient. Use that resilience to change what it is you don’t like in your life. When our house is in order, then we can share what we have learned to help put this world in order.

Many of us have been caught up in the dream of what should be. When we get caught up in that dream, we lose our ability to act and change what is.  If you are caught up in a dream, it’s time to wake up. We don’t live in a perfect world. A few dozen own the majority of the world’s wealth, while billions go hungry. We are all connected so we all suffer as a result of this inequality. It’s time to stop the bleeding and get realistic about life in the moment.

Our world is quickly evolving and evolution only happens when we are at the point where we want something more than we fear going after it. It’s time to leave fear behind and embrace change as we work towards a better future. Heraclites said 2500 years ago

“Change is the only Constant”

It’s time we all become Masters of Change.